An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  Once clear of the western outskirts of the city Sonja felt she could breathe more freely. She was heading for the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, on the border between South Africa and Namibia. If she couldn’t make it today, she would reach it the day after. All she could think to do in the absence of speaking to Emma was to drive towards her dig site. She turned off the air conditioner and wound down the window. The morning air was still crisp and the African sun streamed in through the windscreen. The cloudless blue sky and the grassy farmlands, already turning golden under the endless winter sun, stretched to eternity.

  It was good to be back in Africa. This was South Africa, not Namibia, but the landscape reminded her of her youth. She cruised through tiny towns with little other than wheat silos, a pub and a butchery selling biltong. Burly farmers in Toyota bakkies lifted a finger off the steering wheel to wave good morning to her; African farm workers trudged slowly to another day’s work.

  Sonja spied a cafe and bar, co-located, pulled over and parked in front, got out of the Nissan and stretched. She walked into the cafe, which was empty and called, ‘Hello?’

  A girl in her late teens, blonde, in jeans and a thick pullover, came out from the kitchen. ‘Goeie more, Tannie.’

  ‘More,’ Sonja replied, biting back a retort that she was not the girl’s aunty. Sonja had grown up speaking German and English in her home, but there were many Afrikaner families in the farming district of Okahandja so she learned to speak her third language fluently. Tannie was a term of respect for an elder and, Sonja reflected, she was certainly old enough to have earned the name. She didn’t like to think of herself as ‘old’, but while she kept herself in peak physical shape – a prerequisite for her job – no amount of working out or running could remove the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

  Sonja ordered coffee and eggs and boerewors. The girl apologised that she spoke little English and Sonja told her it was fine. It was, in fact, nice to be speaking the old language again. It made her feel like she was closer to where she belonged, wherever that might be. Perhaps, she thought as she moved out onto the stoep of the cafe to catch some morning sun, she could move to a dorpie like this, a small town where she could reinvent herself and live in peace.

  She dialled Emma’s number and the phone went through to voicemail again. ‘Dammit.’ Sonja felt her anxiety level ratchet up a notch. She’d be angry with Emma if her call for help turned out to be something minor.

  A Toyota Land Cruiser bakkie pulled up. Two fat men in shorts and camouflage jackets got out of the cab and a third, who had been sitting in the open on a canvas-covered seat in the back, climbed down. He swayed as his feet hit the ground. His friends laughed at him and the pair joked in Afrikaans that the man in the back couldn’t handle his liquor. They looked like hunters, Sonja thought. They nodded to her as they walked through to the adjoining bar and, once out of her sight, started to laugh.

  The waitress brought out Sonja’s breakfast, then rolled her eyes as one of the men yelled out for service from the bar.

  Sonja cocked an ear when she heard raised voices inside. In Afrikaans, the men were asking why the young woman couldn’t serve them alcohol at this time of day.

  The girl screamed.

  Sonja set down her knife and fork and slid off the picnic table bench. She walked inside and saw the man who had been in the back of the bakkie lying across the bar, his feet kicking in the air as he swung himself over. His friends were laughing as the man removed a bottle of brandy from its holder. The waitress tried to grab it and he reached around and slapped her on the bottom. This provoked more guffaws from the men.

  The waitress retreated and reached under the bar for a wooden club. She brandished it at the man, who swatted the baton away with a meaty hand.

  ‘Put the bottle down. I’m calling the cops,’ the girl said.

  Sonja stood in the doorway of the bar, as yet unseen by any of them. If the men were smart, they would leave now. The waitress put down the club and picked up the handset of a phone on the bar. She was tough, Sonja thought; she probably had to be to work in a place like this.

  ‘Poepol,’ the girl said to the man with the brandy, who was struggling to get his fat belly back on the bar. He stopped when he heard the insult and reached for the phone.

  The waitress turned her back to him and the man grabbed the phone with his free hand and wrenched the cord from the wall socket. The waitress responded by slapping him in the face.

  Sonja clenched and unclenched her fists. The incident was escalating. She prepared herself, mind and body, for what was to come. She felt a sense of calm wash over her. Her pulse rate slowed and she breathed deeply and evenly as she strode across the otherwise empty barroom floor.

  The man with the brandy tossed the phone away and grabbed the waitress’s arm. She screamed again and one of the other two men reached across the bar and yanked her by her ponytail. The third man backed away, his face going pale.

  ‘Enough, guys,’ he said to his friends, but they were beyond listening.

  ‘Bitch hit me,’ said the fat one with the brandy. He pushed her against the bar.

  Sonja went to the man holding the waitress’s ponytail, coming up fast and silent behind him. She grabbed a fistful of his mullet haircut under his baseball cap and slammed his face down hard and fast into the wooden bar top, shattering his nose. The third man started to close on her. ‘Back off,’ Sonja hissed.

  ‘Get her, man.’ The fat man kept his hold on the struggling girl and smashed the neck of the bottle of brandy against the bar, shattering it. He held the jagged edge against the waitress’s neck.

  The man who had urged moderation kept coming towards Sonja. She put her hands up, palms out, as if submitting, but when he was close enough she delivered a vicious kick to his scrotum. As the man bent double Sonja grabbed a fistful of hair and rammed her right knee up into his nose. Blood spattered her skin below her shorts and she let him fall to the ground. The man whose face she had driven into the bar staggered towards her and swung a wide punch at her. Sonja dodged to one side and jabbed two fingers, hard and fast, into his already broken nose. The man howled like a jackal and sank to his knees.

  ‘Get out or I’ll cut this one’s pretty face,’ the man behind the bar screamed. He had the barmaid in a headlock now, his free hand around her neck and the broken bottle close to her skin.

  ‘Ja, right.’

  Sonja turned and walked outside. She knew the idiot with the broken bottle would not hurt the barmaid, but that didn’t let him off the hook. She peered into the cab of the Land Cruiser. As she expected there were three rifles inside and the men had, sensibly, locked the vehicle. She picked up a brick lining a flower bed outside the bar, smashed the driver’s side window and the truck’s alarm started screaming. A grey-haired man in a butcher’s apron came out of the biltong shop next door.

  Sonja reached into the cab through the shattered glass, unlocked the driver’s side door and opened it. ‘Nothing to see here, Uncle,’ she said to the butcher. The man took a step towards her, but backtracked into his shop as Sonja slid one of the rifles from its padded canvas bag and chambered a round.

  She walked back to the bar, the butt of the rifle snug and comfy against her shoulder as she raised the telescopic sight to her eye.

  The man who had threatened the barmaid was leaning against the bar now and the girl had backed away from him. When he saw Sonja he swayed upright and raised the broken bottle and moved towards the barmaid again. ‘I’ll kill her!’ the man with the bottle screamed.

  A bottle of Jägermeister schnapps exploded behind and to one side of the man’s head, showering him with spirit and shattered glass. The barmaid laughed as the man cowered. Sonja worked the bolt and took aim. Her second shot took out a bottle of scotch.

  ‘Sheesh, man, not the Klipdrift Premium!’ the barmaid cried. Sonja liked her style.

  ‘Next
shot’s for you, outjie,’ she said to the fat man.

  The man dropped the bottle and backed away from the girl half a pace, giving the barmaid the chance to vault across the bar. The man who had grabbed her hair was trying to get up again and the girl kicked him in the stomach and spat on him as he doubled up again.

  ‘Say sorry. Apologise to her,’ Sonja said to the man still behind the bar. She chambered another round, revelling in the smooth, slick action of the rifle.

  He bared his teeth and she shifted the end of the barrel until the crosshairs of the sights were between his eyes. Her finger curled around the trigger and everything slowed around her. She could snuff this fucker out in a heartbeat.

  The girl laid a hand gently on Sonja’s shoulder. ‘No, hey. He’s not worth it. The cops will have heard the shooting; they’re just up the road and they’ll be here in a minute.’

  ‘Say it,’ Sonja said again. She lowered the rifle, tracking down over his nose and chin, along his sternum until she was aiming at his balls. ‘Last chance.’

  The man licked his lips and looked down at where Sonja was aiming. ‘Sorry,’ he croaked.

  ‘That’s better. Are you OK?’ Sonja asked the girl.

  ‘Ja, I’m fine, but you’d better get moving. The owner will be here soon and he won’t be too happy about you shooting up his bar.’

  Sonja turned, walked outside and shot out the first tyre of the Land Cruiser. She chambered a round and shot out another tyre. She removed the bolt from the rifle and dropped it through the metal grille of a stormwater drain. She went to the truck and did the same with the other two hunting rifles.

  The incident had pumped her full of adrenaline and it felt good. It had also felt satisfying to feel the rifle bucking under her control. It was the same when she’d killed Tran Van Ngo. There was no remorse, no fear, no nerves, just the calm satisfaction of a job well done. She had felt incomplete in America, living the life of a glorified housewife or Sam’s red carpet plus one. Sonja leaned into the cab of the Land Cruiser and opened the glove compartment. As she’d hoped, there was a pistol there, probably the owner’s. It was a nine-millimetre Glock. She slid the pistol into the waistband of her shorts, pocketed a spare magazine and walked back to her rented Nissan.

  Blue lights were flashing in her rear view mirror, but the police bakkie pulled off the road and parked in front of the bar as Sonja accelerated up the road, a smile on her face for the first time in quite a while.

  Chapter 6

  It was mid-afternoon when Sonja entered the town of Kuruman. She was tired from the flight and she knew it would be unwise to drive through the night. There was no chance of her reaching the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park before nightfall and she knew accommodation options would become fewer and further between if she kept travelling.

  Kuruman was a popular stopover place and there were dozens of signs for bed and breakfasts. The main street was choked with minibus taxis and honking cars; she had hit the town in its mini evening rush hour. She decided that tomorrow she would take the shorter, gravelled road to the Kgalagadi park, via Hotazel and Van Zylsrus, so she took the turnoff to Hotazel and began to look for a place on the outskirts of town.

  A sign for a bottle store tempted her and she pulled over, walked in, and bought a bottle of Klipdrift, two litres of Coke Light and a bag of ice. She carried on and randomly decided she liked the sound of the Azalea B&B. It turned out to be a good choice, a nice place off to the right of the main road on a suburban back street. The owner was friendly without prying, and showed her to a comfortable room with en suite, a television, and a fridge. He said he could organise dinner for her, but she’d snacked in the car through the afternoon to keep herself awake, so she passed on the offer.

  In her room she poured herself a brandy and Coke, added ice, kicked off her hiking boots and lay down on the bed. Sonja tried Emma’s number again, but there was no answer.

  Don’t worry, she told herself. Sonja finished her drink and nodded off. She awoke two hours later, the sun low outside and slanting in through the room’s window. The news in Afrikaans had just begun on the television. Video of a rhino flashed up on the screen and she turned up the volume.

  Another three rhinos had been killed in the Kruger Park overnight, and in a separate incident another poaching gang had been ambushed by rangers and South African National Defence Force personnel in the reserve; one poacher had been killed and another wounded.

  ‘Should have shot the wounded guy,’ Sonja said out loud. She drained her Klippies and Coke and made another.

  ‘Coming up, later tonight,’ said the news anchor, ‘50–50 has a special report on rhinos in Namibia and how that country is managing to protect its population of wild animals.’

  It was masochistic, Sonja realised, for her to want to watch another program about rhinos. Too often, these shows mentioned Sam, as he was without doubt the highest profile casualty of the war against poaching. But Sonja was interested in the upcoming segment on 50–50, the popular South African nature-based current affairs program. She had wondered, when considering the rhino problem in the wake of Sam’s death, why the country of her birth had been relatively free of poaching.

  There had been the odd incident, but the number of animals killed, however, was a tiny fraction of the losses in South Africa.

  Part of the reason, she was sure, was logistical. Namibia’s rhinos tended to be in remote, sparsely populated parts of the country, with limited road access in and out. By contrast, there were hundreds of thousands of people living along the borders of the Kruger National Park and there was no fence between much of South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique, where many poaching gangs were based. They had a relatively short walk, through thickly vegetated country that allowed concealment from aerial patrols, to get to Kruger’s rhinos. Namibia’s desert-dwelling black rhino, however, traversed wide ranges of open territory.

  Sonja would be interested in what other theories the program’s journalists came up with. She poured herself another brandy and Coke and checked her emails on her phone while she waited. There were a few messages, one from a friend serving in Somalia who had been out of contact with the big wide world and had only just heard about Sam. She hated receiving condolence emails and had long since given up replying to them.

  There was a statement from her bank, but she didn’t need or want to open it. Sam had been an only child and his mother, his sole parent, had passed away, so Sonja was the sole beneficiary of his will. She had been financially secure on her own – she’d made sure she had put aside a portion from her contract fees for Emma’s schooling and future as well – but now she wanted for nothing. Nevertheless, she had put herself back out into the market for some military contracting work. There was the offer of a personal protection gig from an old friend now working in Dubai – he was looking for a woman who could be the bodyguard for a sheik’s wife. Sonja screwed her nose up; she didn’t want to come out of retirement to spend her time following a rich woman through handbag stores.

  Slightly more interesting was a message from a South African ex-recce-commando. Before she’d met Sam she’d had a fling with Piet in Iraq; despite his reputation for toughness he was a big softy with lovely blue eyes, but she could conjure no memories of happiness or ecstasy these days. Piet was in the Central African Republic. The South African National Defence Force had been involved in a full-on shooting war there trying to protect the government from an uprising by Muslim extremist rebels. Piet and some other private contractors were running private security there.

  It’s hectic here, Sonja. Maybe you should stay in California, his email read. She smiled; Piet would know such a comment would be like a red rag to a bull. Emma would be furious once she found out Sonja was getting back into the fray, but as much as Sonja had loved being able to reconnect with her daughter and spend time with her she would go crazy sitting around in a mansion in LA.

  Sonja wallo
wed in her self-pity and encroaching drunkenness. She got up to go to the toilet and tripped over her backpack. As she reached out to steady herself she knocked a lamp off the bedside table. The lampshade came off and the globe popped, covering the carpet in broken glass.

  ‘Scheisse.’ She’d spoken German, for the first time in a long time, she realised as she sat back down on the bed and stared at the glittering fragments on the floor. She remembered her father, Hans, belting her across the back of her skinny legs the first time he’d heard her say that word, ‘shit’. She also remembered Hans slapping her mother in the face.

  Sonja looked to the wall facing the bed, and saw her face in the mirror. She saw the first tear rolling down her cheek. She picked up the lampstand, stared at it for a few seconds then tugged it, ripping its cord from the power point, and hurled it at the mirror. The glass shattered and cascaded down onto the writing bureau and the carpet. She was a one-woman wrecking ball who destroyed everything and everyone who got close to her. It was probably too late to really save her relationship with Emma in any case.

  ‘Mein Gott, reiss dich zusammen!’ she said out loud after splashing water on her face in the bathroom, but try as she might she didn’t seem to be able to pull herself together. It seemed being so close to home meant her German was coming back to her thoughts and words.

  Although she knew she shouldn’t, Sonja made herself another drink and flopped back down on the bed. The program she had been waiting for, 50–50, had begun. She sat through a story about lions being reintroduced into a national park where the species had been shot out decades ago and then, after the commercial break, the story about rhinos came on.

  The small screen of the television didn’t do justice to the majestic landscapes of Namibia, but all the same it moved something inside her to see the endless skies and red, flat-topped mountains. There was vision of a black rhino, lying at first then standing and trotting towards the camera; the rhino had his head up and sniffed the air as he paused.